New functionality introduced to the Council’s website removes barriers associated with locating information around voting records and meeting data.
The award-winning system shows clearly how the Council and its committees have come to their final decisions, by laying out the recommendations made by the Council officers, any changes or amendments to those recommendations, and then how each individual Elected Member voted.
The new system replaces having to riffle through outdated, lengthy and hard-to-navigate PDFs of meeting agendas and meeting minutes, with a user-friendly search function that directs people straight to the information they are looking for.
Smart Council project lead Matt Lane says this tool unlocks access to complex information and enables in-depth data analysis of content that traditionally has been hard to navigate.
“This will make it much easier for journalists and members of the public to see decisions and understand how they were made. Technically all the data existed in meeting minutes, but they can be pretty hard to understand.
“It was possible to track this information before this tool, but not without digging through what are sometimes 300-page PDFs. What used to be a two-hour job will now take two minutes.”
The project was a collaboration between the Council’s developers, designers, the Democracy Services team, residents and council staff writing reports for committees. Elected officials were also given the opportunity to have input.
Team Leader Democracy Services Sean Johnson says the project was driven with feedback from the public, interviews, and usability tests with a diverse group of Wellingtonians, ensuring the tool met community needs.
He says it was important to make the decisions that impact Wellingtonians more accessible, and this new approach will make them much easier for the lay person to understand.
Sean says other New Zealand councils have indicated they are interested in following Wellington’s lead.
"We have done what no other council in New Zealand has done in releasing voting data this way, and we're potentially the first in the world."
The new functionality was released onto the Council’s website in February 2025, with voting data dating back to June 2021.
The new functionality on the website is outlined below.
On the Reports webpage:
• Search keywords and view all associated reports considered at Council and Committee meetings.
• See final decisions, progress on implementation, and associated information.
On the Council Meeting Decision Register webpage:
• View all decisions made by Council and Committees in a table format including progress on implementation.
On Committee pages:
• Export data into a spreadsheet so it can be analysed.
Culture and Collaboration Lead Kylie Buck says the Council looked at how it recorded these meetings and thought “we could do it better”.
She says the data download could be used to help inform people's decisions when it comes to voting in the upcoming local body elections.
Manager Governance and Information Jennifer Parker says the improvements align with the Council’s vision of enhancing transparency, civic engagement, and trust in local governance, and bridges the gap between government and citizens.
“We’ve worked for a long time on how to make decision-making as accessible and transparent as possible. This initiative promotes long-term civic engagement and accountability, contributing to a better-informed public and a more transparent, efficient local government. We’re looking forward to seeing how this tool evolves to inspire civic innovation, not just in Wellington, but potentially across councils worldwide.”
This project won the Web, Digital, and Communications Project of the Year at the ALGIM conference in 2024. All territorial authorities are members of ALGIM (Association of Local Government Information Management).